大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Elizabeth Perez of Stockport Libraries on behalf of "Phil". It has been added to the site with his permission and he fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

The following is a brief account of two evacuations by myself and about 36 members of No. 51 - or perhaps it was No. 52 Tele/Op Section of the Royal Signals during the last war. Perhaps my old friend, John Wilshaw, who used to live in the Dialstone Lane area before he was called up in 1939, will be able to corroborate details of our war service.

This Section served in France in the spring of 1940, first of all in the Le Mans area and in surrounding areas, and later at a village called Bourgenais, which is now close to the civil airport of Nantes. As I was crossing a path leading to our signal office on 10th June 1940, a very disconsolate Frenchman looked up from a row of Muscadet grapes, and said that Italy had declared war. By this time, of course, matters had deteriorated in France. The Dunkirk evaucation had ended, and the Germans were approaching Paris and the Northern French ports. On 14th June, Paris was occupied and surrendered on 16th June, and many allied troops were being evacuated from the Northern French ports.

We received our evacuation orders on 16th June, and as we were struggling to reach the port of St. Nazaire, we heard, on 17th June, that the liner "Lancastria" had been bombed with enormous casualties. Our steps were retraced to Nantes, where I remember having a few beers at the Cafe de Paris in the Place Graslin, before heading south with my section to the next port of evacuation, which was La Rochelle. There were two small coal-carrying ships lying off shore waiting to evacuate a motley crowd of Poles, French and British troops. I cannot remember how I boarded one of these ships, which was called "Jean M", but we left La Rochelle with some bombing and arrived at Newport, in South Wales on 20th June, after a couple of very uncomfortable days on board, but sustaining no casualties.

A state of confusion reigned at Newport - the Poles were assembled and left by train for Scotland, where they eventually joined their colleagues to form the Polish Division. After regrouping, the Section was reformed first at Tisbury, and later as the main Signals Office at Wilton House - a very stately pile at Wilton, a few miles from Salisbury, and the HQ of Southern Command. We were there during the winter and spring of 1940-41 before going to London for more communications assignments.

The second evacuation took place in Java, then a Dutch-controlled island in the Far East. That was not a very pleasant experience, either. We left the Clyde on about 8th December 1941 for an unknown destination, via Freetown, Durban and the Indian Ocean and the Sunda Straits to arrive at what was then the chief port and capital of Java, Batavia. It is now called Jakarta. There we became part of the force called A.B.D.A. Command, composed of Australian, British, Dutch and American units as well as many Dutch naval vessels. I cannot remember the exact date when we arrived in Java, but the Section moved up to a city called Bandoeng, which was under the command of General Wavell. We operated the signal traffic of the combined force. This was a pleasant city up in the hill country.

While there on 15th February 1942, we received a signal indicating the fall of Singapore and the capitulation of the allied forces there. Soon Japanese air and land forces began their assault on the islands of Sumatra, Java and other Dutch possessions. Our signal and teleprinter equipment was destroyed, and we made our tortuous way down to a port of evacuation called Tijilajap (now Cilacap). This was on 26th February. Chaos existed on the quayside as two ships began to take on evacuees - Dutch women and children, bedraggled HQ personnel, devoid of equipment and short of food. We had one casualty - a good colleague called Dick Leclerc, who unfortunately was left on the island to a fate which is still unknown to me. Was he a prisoner? Has he survived? I wonder. Eventually the ship "Kedah" with far too many on board, left the port on 26th February with some straffing to send us off, and we arrived without further incident at Colombo, in what was then Ceylon on 7th March 1942.

The unit without Dick Leclerc regrouped and established communications at Army HQ at the Museum in Colombo. On Easter Sunday, 5th April, the city, and particularly the port area, was subjected to a pulverising bombardment by nine bombers and fighters - 36 Zeros I am told - flown from a Japanese Carrier group in the Indian Ocean. Merchant shipping - the "Hector", "Lucia", "Clan Murdock" and many naval units were badly damaged. A later raid followed on about 9th April, and mass evacuation of the populace of the town took place. This Section continued to operate in Ceylon, with detachments at places like Dambulla, Vavuniya, Kandy and Bentota until about July 1945.

When S.E.A.C. was established under Admiral Mountbatten at Kandy, the work we had undertaken became subsidiary to the general planning for the assault on Malaya. Since we were amongst the first to be mobilised in 1939, we were glad to hear that we would be amongst the first to be demobilised after the war had ended in Europe. We left Ceylon, via Bombay, and were in the Red Sea, when we heard that an American B-29 had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6th August 1945.

Very little has been written about the campaign in Java, apart from the horror suffered by those captured by the Japanese -men like Billie Griffiths who suffered the most horrendous injuries. The Section about which I have written was lucky to have survived two unpleasant incidents without too many fatalities. I wish I could meet some of my former friends - boys like "Chummy" Farmborough, Jack Bedding, Ron Barrett, "HLM Moss", Bill Collins, and of course John Wilshaw, who went to Hong Kong, instead of returning with the Section, and whom I have not seen since we met by chance in Woolworths in Stockport in about 1948. I hope this will bring back some memories to those who were together for many years. They might remember me - "Phil" to those who do.

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